Private Training Providers - Good and Bad?

February 4, 2014

Private training provision is becoming more and more available as adult individuals opt for this choice of achieving qualifications over the traditional Further Education College approach. The reason behind this we believe is that private training providers are not restricted by set intake dates, not restricted by funding issues and they also have the opportunity to get individuals through the entire process a lot quicker.

Whilst this is good news for us, unfortunately there is also a down-side to this as it becomes more and more apparent that training providers start to use a variety of tactics to recruit trainees.

At Able Skills, we are keen to sell the truth to all who choose to take the time to enquire with us. Having been providing training since 2002, we are keen to maintain our reputation and not to be dragged into the various blogs and forum discussions which centre around bad training provision and experiences.

These kind of articles and reviews do prompt individuals to be apprehensive about sourcing training and do bring on some very odd questions sometimes.

Advice offered by Able Skills

We encourage individuals to run a credit check on Able Skills so that they can view the financial history of the company, thus underpinning the fact that we will still be around once they turn up for training.

We encourage visitors to our centre with a ‘no appointment required’ approach. We are open 7 days every week and the centres and offices are manned from 08.30 – 16.30 so there will always be someone available to help with enquiries.

We do not have a sales team to hound individuals with nuisance calls or bombard them with relentless emails or even to make appointments to turn up at peoples homes at ridiculous hours. We just have 4 or 5 of us in the office taking calls, giving advice and dealing with bookings.

The benefit of Able Skills over some other training providers:

We offer training through the week and at weekends

We offer low deposit and interest free payment plans

We have an ‘open house’ policy

We have our own very reasonably priced accommodation

We offer the right courses and qualifications for the right industry

We have dedicated trade specific instructors

We have dedicated trade specific training areas

We are accredited by City & Guilds, Construction Skills and EAL

We have fantastic support and feedback from all of our certificating bodies

The aim of this article is obviously to promote Able Skills however, it is also aimed at protecting individuals from booking the wrong courses or paying too much money for certain courses or even to warn individuals against high interest loans that some providers encourage.

If individuals choose not to train at Able Skills that is fine however my advice would be to at least use us as a benchmark for industry approved qualification guidance and just as important, price guidance.